


A Place to Rest the Heart

by samjohnsson



Series: The Daughter's Dance [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-15
Updated: 2010-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samjohnsson/pseuds/samjohnsson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some conversations just need to happen in person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place to Rest the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This second part started blocking itself out almost as soon as the first piece was posted. And love and honor abounds to Raine Wynd for telling me to trust my jewelry instincts and feeding me exactly what Danny would say and then hitting this with a large hammer. Repeatedly. And somehow, schmoop showed up.

Twenty hours later, Danny staggered out of the Honolulu baggage claim, disturbed at how the best thing to happen in the last few days was he was back in Hawaii and away from his psychotically nagging family in Jersey. The miserably long pair of flights, complete with the usual assortment of TSA idiots, cramped seats aggravating his knee, seat partners with head colds, uncontrolled children, and of course one piece of luggage with his good suit going to god-knows-where, had banked the fire of his anger for the long burn. Turning his phone on, he was scrolling through to find where he saved his parking lot number when it rang with a call from his and Steve's house.

“Good timing with the call. Be useful and…” Danny’s sharpened tone cut off the second he heard a plaintive voice through the phone.

“Daddy?”

“Monkey! You’re okay! You're still at Steve's?” It was well past the time that Rachel should have picked her up, but he wasn’t about to argue if it meant avoiding dealing with her today.

“We tried calling this morning, but you didn’t answer!” Grace’s voice wavered with fear. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to us!”

“I was on a plane, Grace. Could you do Danno a favor? Tell Steve he needs to figure out dinner. I just landed and I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. I’ll talk to you two then.”

“Danno, you’re home?” Grace couldn’t contain the nervous excitement in her voice.

To his credit, he barely hesitated. “Yeah, Grace, I’m home.”

He waited till she hung up, breathed deeply, and slowly paced out to his car. The drive to the house would have shocked anyone familiar with him – he didn’t talk or gesture to the other drivers and only slightly violated the speed limits. If most of the lights were still pink when he went through them, well, no one was going to say anything.

\---

Danny hadn’t gotten his bag out of the car before he felt a small body hit his side. Damn, he’d been gone only four days and she still seemed a bit taller. Bracing himself against the car, he reached down to pick his clinging daughter up. It looked like she hadn’t even attempted to dress up today; she was wearing an old t-shirt Danny had got her at Six Flags last summer and a beat-up pair of shorts, her light brown hair messily pulled back in a braid. Even then, the shirt was rumpled and her hair was coming undone, as if someone kept running their hands over it agitatedly – she really was turning into his daughter, if she’d picked up the hair fidget. He smirked at that – it was a small victory over Rachel, but he’d take it.

“Hey, monkey. You’re getting way too tall for this.” He hugged her close to his chest.

“Daddy, don’t be mad at Steve. I'm sorry. It was all my fault,” Grace pleaded, looking up at him briefly, her soft brown eyes wide and anxious in a look that Danny had given up trying to resist when she was three, before burying her head into his shoulder.

“Oh, sweetie.” He closed the trunk of the car with his elbow, bag untouched, and carried his daughter into the house. “I’m not mad at either of you. You made a bad mistake. You _are_ in trouble for that. Steve reacted without thinking, and he’s in trouble for that. Neither of you called me, so you’re both in trouble for that. But I’m not mad at you.” Danny squeezed Grace tightly before he set her down on the living room couch and kneeled painfully on the floor in front of her. “I could never be mad at my monkey. Now, want to tell me why you wandered off from Steve?”

Grace ashamedly looked down at her sandals. “I thought he was with me, and Step-Stan doesn’t always like to hold my hand when we’re somewhere, so I didn’t think about it.”

Danny's eyebrows and temper immediately shot up at that. “Oh, really. That’s good to know. I may have to talk at him later.” He paused to breathe, not wanting any anger in his voice. “But why’d you leave the store again, once you realized Steve wasn’t with you? You know better.”

“I thought I could get back to him, but then everyone started running around and shouting and shutting the gates and it was crazy and one of the salespeople took all us kids to the registers and told us to wait there.” Grace’s voice rose only slightly by the end, the stillness in her body a reflection of both Rachel’s training and Danny’s own self-control. Her fear was given away, however, by her tight, fast breaths and wide, unfocused eyes.

“Grace, honey. It’s okay. Shh. Shh." Danny leaned over to pull her into his lap, holding her to him. "It worked out. See, what really happened? You got a little bit of adventure, the police got a good practice, and a whole lot of tourists now have a story to tell when they get back home." He waited for her breathing to slow. "It’s not going to happen again, right? When we go somewhere like the mall, you keep a hand on one of us, okay? Me, Steve, your mom, even Step-Stan, whether he likes it or not. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Danno,” Grace said, meekly, focusing on his face solidly for the first time that night, and brought her best pitiful, miserable look to bear. “And my punishment?”

He sighed, unable to resist the fear lurking in the corners of her eyes. “Well, I agree with Steve that we’re going to hold off on the surfing lessons. They can still help you with your swimming since that's practical, but no surfing for two months. And no friends over for at least the next two weekends you’re here. After that, we’ll see. Now, Danno loves you,” Danny hugged his daughter tightly, “but I need to have an adult conversation with Steve, so why don’t you go play in your room for a bit?”

“Are you going to yell at him? Don’t yell at him, Daddy.” She bit her lip as she stood up.

“We’ll see, monkey,” he sighed, shaking his head. “I'll try not to.”

Danny waited a few minutes after Grace disappeared down the hall, collecting his thoughts and remembering who he was angry at, before walking out onto the lanai to find Steve.

\---

“So you avoiding me out here?” Danny stopped in the doorway, slouching against the frame.

Steve didn’t turn from where he was kneeling by the fire pit. Judging from the wrinkles and stains, Danny was willing to bet the t-shirt and cargoes were the same ones from yesterday. “I figured you wanted to talk to Grace first, and I had just put the steaks on. Why are you back early?”

“I missed you too, Steve. I don’t know – a couple reasons?" He thought he might as well let the anger out. "Because I really didn’t want to go to jail for murdering my mother and cousins if they asked me – again – when I was going to meet someone and settle down? Because I got lucky on moving my flight? Because no one from college was around and the guys from the precinct had a huge heroin bust to wrap? Because for some insane reason, I missed this palm-covered rock? Because the man I trusted with my daughter lost her, then proceeded to overreact and cause a huge panic, without applying a bit of logic to finding her? Pick your favorite.” His voice got louder with each passing sentence, his hands clenching and tapping his thigh with every sentence.

Steve’s back tensed. “Trusted?”

Danny rolled his eyes at that – of all the words for Steve to notice. He walked over to him and set a hand gently on his shoulder and lowered his voice – he did promise Gracie he’d try to not yell. “Trust.” Keeping a hand loosely on his back, he pulled over the bench they bought together for the fire pit last spring, one of the first pieces of furniture they bought as a couple. He needed to sit before his knee fell apart and made the week worse. “But we do need to talk about it.”

Steve sighed and turned to face him, jaw clenched tightly and his brow furrowed deeply in despair. His face was visibly ashen under the tan, and his eyes were ringed with the dark circles of a sleepless night. “Danno, I, uh, I am…”

“I know, you’re sorry,” Danny cut in, temper still roiling. While he’d listen to stuttering from his nine-year-old daughter, he wasn’t going to listen to it from his thirty-four-year-old lover. “I get the feeling I’m going to be hearing it a lot from the two of you for a while. Explain to me what happened, and then I’ll beat some sense into your head. Come here.” He grabbed Steve’s arm and dragged him up to sit on their bench. "So, Commander, report. Explain to me how you lost my daughter and shut down a mall."

Steve’s shoulders slumped down as he focused on a spot between his bare feet.

Danny waited a solid two minutes, his anger building each second. "Oh, really? That's an interesting explanation. Except for the complete lack of words. These things usually work better with words. I get that she slipped away. I've long debated putting her on a leash, and I dread five years from now when she's a teen and she's learned all your ninja skills." Danny leaned over to bump his shoulder against Steve, seeing a weak half-grin surface, and stayed pressed in. "I’ve had a miserable twenty-four hours, Steve, mostly caused by worrying about my partner and daughter. I don’t want to do the whole dance tonight. Just tell me about the freak-out."

Steve shrugged lopsidedly, still staring at the ground. "I thought it was a textbook bump-and-grab."

Oh, that explained everything. Danny let some of his exasperation into his voice as he turned to look at Steve. "A what, now?"

Steve's face blanked as he continued to stare at the ground. "No different than the wallet lifts and such we've done a dozen times, only a bigger package." He made small hand gestures, maneuvering the imaginary participants. "Escort on the left, package on the right, and a crowded area, for preference. Alpha runs into the escort on his left side, turning him, and starts to fall over, so the escort grabs Alpha by the shoulders to keep him up. Meanwhile, Beta grabs the package, subdues it chemically, injected for preference, inhaled otherwise, and disappears behind the escort, vanishing in the blind spot. I turned my head to see Grace and she was gone and..." Steve lifted his eyes to stare off into the distance. "If I wanted to grab a kid, it'd be exactly how I'd run the op, mall and everything. And she'd be good leverage against the team, so she'd be exactly who I'd run the op against." He fell silent, his face still empty save for a small furrow between his brows.

When he could breathe again, Danny swallowed and whispered hollowly, "Steve? Some days, that zombie commando mode of yours scares the hell out of me. Please. Please. _Please_ say you didn't tell my daughter any of these theories of yours."

"No, of course not." Steve's stare didn't shift from the horizon, though his right hand clenched repeatedly near Danny’s leg, as if unconsciously wanting contact. "Anyway, I thought she was taken and I reacted accordingly."

The primal urge to lean away from this explicit threat to his daughter was overwhelming, but Danny embraced his contrarian self and leaned in closer, grabbing Steve’s seeking hand. He hurt on Steve’s behalf when he thought about what Steve’s knowledge implied, but he knew tonight was a time for healing. "Some day, we're gonna discuss why your mind immediately went to a worse option than I considered. And for the record, that description was way too smooth to be theoretical."

Danny didn’t think Steve’s face could become any more frozen, more lost in past memories, but of course his partner had to prove him wrong, so he tightened his grip on Steve’s hand, anchoring the man in the present.

"I don't want details, like, ever, and you can't tell me without killing me, I'm sure, but damn it – why didn't you think she just wandered off," he ground out, still whispering. "Why shut the entire mall down?"

Steve's voice became as flat as his expression, and he shifted away from Danny, trying to pull his hand free. "I didn't want to give them a chance to get away."

Danny refused to release his grip, not wanting to give him an escape. "I don't know if you've noticed, Steve, but it's an island, and not a particularly large one at that. Shut the airport and harbors and any kidnappers could only get so far."

"Danny, I..." Steve’s voice trailed off, raggedly.

He squeezed Steve’s hand, in both support and frustration. "Spit it out, Steve."

Standing up and jerking free of Danny’s grasp, Steve strode to the edge of the lanai, his back turned to Danny, his voice as choppy as the surf he was staring at. "I... I lost your daughter."

"Yeah, but you got her back. And even if it was a kidnapping, you would've had her back before I got home." Danny stood and moved to his partner’s side, wrapping his right arm comfortingly around Steve's waist. "But why the absolutely idiotic search method? Didn't the police try to run it according to protocol?"

A miniscule amount of tension left Steve’s rigid frame at the change of topic. Explaining processes were always more comfortable to him than explaining reasons and Danny knew it. "I may have yelled at them to do it my way. It's how we always did it, clearing a facility – start at one end and secure your way across."

Danny turned Steve around and held him at arm's length, seeing the pain ghosted in the corners of his face. He knew then that Steve wasn’t just upset that he lost Grace. That he used the completely wrong plan to try and get her back was just increasing the torment. "Okay, one of these days, you're going to have to learn two little lessons. One, that not everything in the military maps into the real world, and two, that a lot of the people around you are professionals who know what they're doing. Not unlike you knowing how to kidnap little girls."

Steve's face flashed to pure horror and then completely crumpled into horrid misery. "It wasn’t – we were trying –"

"Did you not listen when I said don’t tell me?" Danny snapped and saw Steve’s entire body flinch back. Agonized by the pain his words had caused his partner, Danny reeled him in fully, wrapping his arms around his lover’s tense chest. "Ah, damn it, Steve. That didn't come out right."

Steve wordlessly leaned tighter into the comfort offered by his lover’s embrace, and rested his cheek against the top of Danny’s head. Danny wasn’t sure that he didn’t feel a few tears fall onto him.

Danny breathed out a lot of his anger, and carefully paced his next words as he slowly stroked up and down Steve’s back. "The various protocols that are in place, the reason they say to do it 'by the book'? They're there because they work. I know you hate the rules, but they're there because they’ve been done many times. If they had used 'textbook' protocols, they would have asked you a few questions and started where you had been. You're a professional who knows how to run this op from one side. They're professionals who know how to do the op from the other side." He rubbed his face against Steve's chest soothingly. "The whole thing would've been over in thirty minutes, tops.” Danny’s hands clenched in Steve’s shirt in remembered anger. “But the part of this that I hate? My absolute favorite part of this to be mad at?"

The tension in the words travelled straight into Steve’s back and he tried to pull away again. Danny kept his hands locked around Steve’s waist.

"Oh, no, you're not going anywhere. You need to know where you actually did screw up. The one part of this that is still pissing me off? The part that made me run up my credit to get back on a plane today?" Breathing in deeply, Danny raised his left hand to Steve's face and turned it toward him. Steve resisted briefly, but eventually met his partner’s eyes. "It's the part where you. Completely. Failed. To call. Me. I had to find out from Kono. God forbid I had found out from Rachel! I want to know what you were planning to do when I got home. When were you going to mention it?"

The practiced blank look returned to Steve's face, but the tension in his hands at his sides was a dead giveaway. He swallowed carefully. "I was going to call you in the morning when I was sure Grace was okay."

“And looking at you, I bet you were up all night, watching to make sure she stayed okay.” Danny closed his eyes, tilting his head down for a minute, breathing slowly, before he replied through grit teeth. "Steve, I apparently didn't make a ground rule clear enough at some point in our relationship. I'm fine at work occasionally trusting you to not tell me everything, because there are situations you are the professional and can deal with better. I'm fine with you keeping some secrets from me, because I know that's how you were raised and there are things from your days as a SEAL that you can't discuss. Even the things that your next few days of guaranteed nightmares are going to make me want to ask you about." Danny's voice dropped to a loud whisper as he looked straight at Steve's widening eyes, dragging his hand soothingly along Steve’s jaw. "But when it comes to my daughter, there will be nothing you keep from me ever again. If she's with you and scrapes her knee, I want to know immediately. I don't care how minor you think it is, or how busy you think I am. Not knowing, when it involves Grace, is one thing I will not tolerate. Do you understand me? I don't have to say more?"

Steve nodded weakly, still pale under the tan and shoulders hiked up toward his ears. "Yes. I do know that. I am sorry, Danno."

"Good." Danny's breath released in one go, and he ran his hand up into Steve's hair. "It's a damn good thing I love you, or I would've had to kill you for this stunt."

Surprise radiated across Steve's face as he put his hands on Danny's shoulders. "You do love me?"

Danny's eyes narrowed to slits, as he searched Steve's face. "You know this. I've said it before. Why are you shocked?"

"Just, after..." Steve trailed off, closing his eyes and pressing his head into Danny's still-raised hand. "It's good to hear. We don't say it a lot."

Moving both hands down around Steve's waist, Danny leaned back in to his chest and sighed deeply. “Yeah. I love you for being an emotion-phobic freak at home, a predictable nut job at work, and an overprotective lunatic for my daughter. Much as my daughter gave me a reason to come here, you've given me a reason to stay." Danny pressed a soft kiss above Steve's heart. "That said, I’m not helping you with any of the paperwork from Friday, though, ‘cause while you’re going to get me killed one of these days, if I get in Governor Jameson's way, they won’t ever find the sharks she feeds me to.” Danny relaxed as he felt Steve’s tension break and pressed their bodies together, fully relaxing against his lover’s hard planes. While Danny was still upset about the whole situation, Steve…no, they both needed this calm embrace, this reminder of who and what they were to each other. He leaned in, remembering every line he’d traced on this body, every angle…

Well, every angle except for that one.

“Uh, Steve, what the hell is in your pocket?”

Steve smirked dirtily, and ran his hands slowly down Danny’s back. “Well.”

“Not that. The cargo pocket. It feels like.” Danny quickly slid a hand down into said pocket, too curious to be easily distracted, and fished out a small, felt-covered box. “Ah-ha! A ring box. Feel like explaining this, Steve?”

Steve turned his head away, a sheepish smile spreading across his face. “Uh. Not yet?”

“Bzzt! Wrong answer.” Danny twisted out of Steve's embrace and waved the box around.

A faint blush rose behind Steve's tan. Danny grinned wider to see the previous ashen tone replaced by something healthier. "It was going to be your Christmas present. I hadn't figured out where to hide it yet."

"Easy enough. Give it to me now and you won't have to worry about tying up spaces to stash stuff for Grace." The temptation to open it was getting worse the longer he looked at it in his hand, and Danny was never good at resisting temptation.

"It was supposed to be for Christmas. I had all my shopping done." Steve made a half-hearted attempt to grab the box back.

Danny only looked up far enough to keep track of Steve to avoid him. "Poor compulsive man. Grace'll have to drag you back to the mall."

Steve froze for a second, then lunged, succeeding in wrapping his arms around Danny again. "You...you'd trust me with your daughter like that again?"

Danny couldn’t help but roll his eyes at that and leaned forward to press a brief kiss to Steve’s lips. "Stupid man. Yes, I still trust you with my daughter. Didn't we cover that at the beginning of this? If nothing else, one thing I've learned about your plans is that you never repeat a mistake. And while you're still pretending to be all stiff I-have-no-emotions boy, I know you. I can see this scared you more than either me or Grace. She's here, she's safe. I'm here, I'm annoyed but getting over it." Danny leaned in briefly, and used Steve’s relaxed grip to dance back out of his arms, waving the box a bit in Steve's worried face. "Now, let’s see what’s in here."

Steve tried once more to grab the box, but Danny demonstrated he had been staring at Steve's ninja skills for more than the obvious reasons as he evaded again and opened the small box in one smooth motion. His jaw fell open as he saw a matched set of a tie tack and cuff links, carefully sculpted out of a brushed silvery metal, with arcs of what appeared to be pearl entwined with something that resembled stone on the top, creating a subtly blended spiral that caught the dim light of the fire and refracted it around the lanai.

"Steve. What. I mean. What...?" Danny's stuttering voice trailed off as he froze in place.

The familiar half-smirk returned to Steve's face as he gathered Danny back into his arms. With a kiss to his forehead he walked him over to the bench. "I rendered you speechless. I'll have to remember this technique."

"Yeah. Cause I want to see Kono's face when you give me jewelry at work." Because, really, between them, snark was almost required in a situation like this. Not that he was sure what this situation was. Danny lifted his eyes, narrowed with suspicion, to meet Steve’s open ones. "That didn't answer my question."

"It's a tie tack and cuff links. I had them custom-made. Platinum base. The top's Hawaiian mother-of-pearl and New Jersey marble – and didn't the jeweler complain about working with that," Steve tried to go for casual with a shrug, but missed entirely as the grin spreading across his face gave his thoughts away.

Completely shocked, Danny looked back at the box and its shiny, shiny contents. They sometimes got each other gifts, but nothing this…expensive. "Yeah, but why?"

Steve's smile shifted to a little-boy grin. "I wanted to get you something you could wear and it'd be from me. I was thinking a ring, but it didn't seem quite right yet. It'd also mess up your grip for a while, and it's too obvious for work. I wanted something subtle." He pressed a kiss to the top of his partner’s head and pressed Danny down to sit on the bench behind him.

"Yeah, because the first word people think of about you is subtle. But...a tie tack?" Danny looked back up, confused. "I thought you hated my ties. You're always trying to get me to not wear them."

"They're growing on me." Steve shrugged slightly and dropped to one knee. "I can learn, eventually. I don’t know if anyone told you, but you’re kind of hot in a suit – that helps. Anyway, they're who you are, who you like to be. There are a few things I can't control or change about you."

"And oh, how that must drive you nuts." His thoughts stopped, as he realized Steve was kneeling in front of him. "You said you were thinking about a ring. As in, an engagement ring?"

Steve had the decency to look embarrassed, a slight amount of tension in his shoulders, but he didn’t look away. "Uh, sort of, Danno? I know you're still gun-shy after Rachel, but I'm used to you being around. I wanted to give you something that might remind you that you want to be around, too. But I figured a ring would be too much and would scare you off."

"You're used to me being around." Danny had to shake his head as he reached forward to stroke his partner’s face. "Steve, that may the most singularly unromantic proposal I've ever heard."

That earned a nervous snort from Steve. "Because you've heard so many."

"Oh, you might be surprised.” He moved in close and smiled broadly at Steve. “Sure, okay."

Hope appeared on Steve’s face, even as he rested his hands on his lover’s waist. "Okay?"

"Okay. Yes." A devilish grin appeared spread across Danny’s face as he leaned forward, stopping with his lips ghosting over Steve’s. "I will accept your not-a-ring as the kind-of-a-proposal that it is. And my answer to your kind-of-a-proposal, which I would like to note has you on your knee, is 'I kinda like being around,' so I will wear your tie tack proudly. Even when you do bone-headed things that are going to make me drop dead of a heart attack."

Steve couldn't help himself but to close the distance and kiss him soundly. All the tension and fear of the last forty-eight hours finally melted away. When they parted, he turned his head towards the cooling coals of the fire and the forgotten steaks and turned back to rest his forehead on Danny's. "So, find Grace and order pizza?"

"What? You're kind-of-proposing and you can't even provide a proper dinner? I may have to re-think my answer." Danny sighed dramatically and looked up as if considering something. He tilted his head back down for another long kiss. "Yeah, let's go find our daughter."

\---

At work Monday, Danny wore his usual white button-down and tie combination, only with a small shining spot tacking the fabric in place. And Kono quietly passed Chin a twenty and started looking at bridesmaid dresses.


End file.
